©Joe Carson 9-19-00

Spam, spam, spam,spam,
Spam, spam, spam, spam.
Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam!
(Monty Python)

Remember the "Spam" sketch from Monty Python? That routine was created long before the personal computer, email or the web. At the time the routine's overuse of spam seemed quite funny. Today with spam having a whole different meaning, getting an overdose of spam isn't quite so funny.

For instance, today I was lucky. I got perhaps fewer than a dozen useless spam emails. You know, the usual "Work At Home" frauds, promises that spam email really does get customers (more on that later...), occasional porn ads (why me?), ads for Propecia (with my head of hair I don't think I am much of a target customer for this stuff...), ads for Viagra (Viagra? Do I look like a 74 year old Hugh Hefner trying to keep up with his four twenty-something live-in girlfriends!?), etc. I am sure you all know exactly what I mean. We all get our email boxes stuffed with that d*mned stuff wasting our time and money with useless trash that for the most part is thoroughly illegal everywhere.

Unfortunately, spam is costly as well as a major time waster for personal email recipients, business and the ISPs why try desperately to block it out as best they can, but even a big ISP has to spend more money on spam eradication than makes sense and eventually the costs always come back to us, the ISP clients. Typically, roughly $2 to $3 of your ISP bill goes to spam fighting. That eventual adds up to less service to you, the client. So why do we get spam in the first place? Who is sending us this stuff and who really benefits from this deluge of cyber-trash?

Enter the DMA (Direct Marketing Association). The DMA is the Big Kahuna of trash ads in all forms from waste paper circulars to trash mail to just about every form of direct annoyance they can dream up, including email spam. Interestingly enough, no major corporation is stupid enough to engage in this sort of useless time and money wasting nonsense. They are perfectly aware that "direct marketing" (what a euphemism for deliberately annoying the h*ll out of the potential customer!) not only does not generally work but actually creates a really poor image of the company that engages in it. In fact, "direct marketing" not only costs money to use, but generally is about the most counterproductive form of advertising known. This is why the DMA targets mostly small businesses in the hopes that they aren't sophisticated enough to realize what a major rip-off that "direct marketing" really is.

One hint of how useless direct marketing online is was a study I saw in the last few days where someone actually checked to see how many of us actually click on those banner ads that pop up everywhere on the web. The percentage came rather close to zero percent. Not quite zero, but close enough to tell us that those ads aren't getting the desired message across to potential customers, and this is with a form of online advertising most of us find almost acceptable. Can you imagine just how effective those irritating email spam ads are?

I can, especially after reading WHY BULK E-MAIL IS BAD BUSINESS by Linda Formichelli. In this online anti-spam page she recounts a horror story of why those email ads not only irritate the recipient but are a clear scam designed to separate an honest small business person from their money and with little thought of actually providing a real service to them. As an example used on the page, Erica Shames wanted to reach a potential audience for her regional magazine, Susquehanna Life.That is a simple and perfectly legitimate business objective. Of course, she thought perhaps using the web as a way to advertise might work. So, she paid $199 to IMC Marketing who promised she would reach 250,000 people. What happened was a surprise to her. She got four positive responses and subscriptions (Gee, costing her only about $50 per subscription!) but a larger number of nasty emails, demands to know how she got their email addresses, reports to the FCC and her State Attorney General and a major reprimand from her ISP.

The page goes on to demonstrate that spam email ads are not inexpensive, not productive and generally are scams that rip off the honest small business person who naively uses them and annoy the h*ll out of the recipient. We won't even go into the majority of email spam ads which are generally illegal frauds and porn.

So what can we do about spam? Well for one thing you can laugh at the spammers. I found two sites dedicated to laughing at spam and spammers, and I am sure there must be more. One of these sites is Please Spam Me!, and the other is the Spam Roaster's Club. These sites talk about stupid spammers... The sites list some really stupid spam. The site owners really think these guys are yo-yos, but then again, don't the rest of us agree? You really have to go there and read some of the dumb spam that gets posted on emails. If you have some really stupid spam, go there and post it. Let someone get a laugh out of it even if it did annoy you when you got it.

Another thing you can do is let them know that their spam will cost them money. At least in California it can cost the spammers if you handle it just right. The following info was clipped from Spam.abuse.net which is located in, guess where... California! Gee, big surprise.

Spamming to or from California e-mail service providers against their policy is now a civil offense under California Business and Professions Code Section 17538.45. If you run a California-based e-mail service provider, you need to notify your customers of the law and your anti-spam policy in order to be eligible to collect damages of $50 per message. You should also put a notice similar to the following onto your web pages:

The sending of any unsolicited email advertising messages to this domain will result in the imposition of civil liability against you in accordance with Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code Section 17538.45.

I guess if you are lucky you can not only get even, you might even get some cash too. Now THAT'S an incentive to go after spam if I ever saw one.

You can also sic the local law on them. One site, How to Complain About Spam, or, Put a Spammer in the Slammer tells you how to do that. The site also includes a marvelous list of addresses and links to legal issues regarding spam including anti-spam laws being proposed, ways to get the local Attorneys General onto the backs of spammers and various spam related frauds, etc.

Our friends in Europe don't love spam any better than we do. Join our Brothers & Sisters Across The Sea in our endless fight against the Tyranny of the Direct Marketing Association's invasion of our computers! If you are in Europe or have friends in Europe, have them look up EuroCAUCE. Their site also can be viewed in the following languages: English, Español, Français, Italiano & Norsk.

Another overseas anti-spam organization to check on is CAUBE.AU based in Australia. You didn't really think any Aussies would take email spam lying down did you? The only spam I can see any red-blooded Aussie liking would perhaps be served fried with eggs, toast, potatoes and coffee or thick-as-mud tea in the morning.

Of course, there are many organizations and sites dedicated to doing battle with the spam scammers. I have included a small list of URLs to various web pages and organizations dedicated to fighting spam. I could not include anything like the large number of sites that exist, but these sites also have links to a large number of other spam fighters as well.

Go join the battle. These sites can give you the weapons you need to do battle with the Spam Monster.

joecarson@applelust.com